Savers

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT SAVERS - PAGE 5

In groping to find a way to pay for a $100 billion bailout of the savings and loan industry, the Bush administration has stumbled and fumbled, frightening many Mom and Pop savers. The big scare came when the Treasury Department floated the idea of charging a 25-cent fee on every $100 in federally insured savings and checking deposits at banks and savings and loans. To most lawmakers and savers across the country, that looked like a tax-and a monumentally dumb idea in a country that needs to increase its personal savings rate.

What's wrong with this picture: It's a beautiful day for a ballgame. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing north-northeast. You`re sitting in the left field bleachers at Wrigley-peanuts and brew in hand-all set to see the Cubbies stomp the Mets. Your body's covered with sunscreen SPF 30. Yes, it's time to "Play ball." But, wait. You`ve forgotten your baseball cap and have nothing to protect your hair from being dried out and your scalp from being burned by the harsh sun. Here are some hair and scalp savers you should know about: - The Body Shop's Aloe Hair Gel ($6.05, 3.5 ounces)

(Linda Stern is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Not everybody gets happy every time Federal Reserve policymakers promise to hold interest rates low for years to come. Savers suffer, and retirees worry about where they will get any income in an era when 10-year U.S. Treasury yields, at 1.5 percent, are near record lows and one-year certificates of deposit are averaging 0.32 percent interest, according to Bankrate.com. Yield-hunters can at least be glad they don't live in France, where the government issued negative-interest bonds this week.

California-based tech consulting firm NFO Prognostics recently released the results of a survey that found 93 percent of high-tech companies believe the compensation of some or all employees should be tied to customer service measurements. Of the 145 companies surveyed nationwide, 54 already had some customer satisfaction/compensation link, while 85 percent of those without such programs said they would like to implement a partial or complete wage/satisfaction program. Tech companies are looking at tying employee pay to customer satisfaction and productivity, experts say. But implementing such plans may have to wait until the economy picks up, with many firms concerned about keeping tech salaries down in the meantime.

In what was described as the "largest cyber-petition in history," leaders of a new movement called Censure and Move On delivered more than a quarter-million Internet-generated signatures to congressional offices across the country Thursday, urging Congress to quickly deal with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and turn its attention to more important matters. In Chicago, about a dozen members of the group dumped nearly 2,000 local signatures on the downtown office desk of U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates.

Unless savers care enough to protest--loudly and in writing, to their senators and representatives--Congress may gut an important consumer law. It's called the Truth-in-Savings Act. Thanks to this 5-year-old law, savers get an honest accounting of the interest rate they earn. Bankers can no longer fudge. In the bad old days (not so long ago), you couldn't tell which savings deposit was the best deal. That's because there are lots of ways to figure yield. Given a choice between two certificates of deposit--one at 4.9 percent, one at 5 percent--you'd probably pick the latter.

Congressmen were no doubt alarmed to read in the Wall Street Journal that economic forecasters predict the personal savings rate will fall to 3.6 percent of disposable income this year. That's the lowest rate since the postwar spending spree of 1947. And it's expected to go even lower. Over the past few decades, Congress usually has made life as difficult as possible for the savers, both business and personal. When the Reagan administration came in with the 1980s, that pattern was changed for the better, with new incentives provided for savers.

Wall Street yawned when Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board lowered interest rates last week. If anything, the investment community was unhappy that rates weren't dropped even further. That's because most observers eventually expect the Fed to go further, with rates coming down by as much as a full percentage point in the next few months. That would hit all of us squarely in the wallet. Last week's small cut will have a limited effect on savings, credit cards and mortgage rates.

(Reuters) - U.S. retirement savers are increasingly diversifying into international equities, but are still leaving much of what has to be considered a free lunch on the table. A new study of 3.8 million U.S. savers in 401(K) retirement accounts over the 2006-2011 period shows a general trend towards better diversification internationally, but with most accounts still significantly under-diversified. And yet, given the diminishing share of U.S. companies in global equity capitalization, they are, as a group, far less diversified than they ought to be. "One key fact emerging from the data is that there is an upward trend in the extent of international diversification.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Thursday to force investors and wealthy savers to share the costs of future bank failures, moving closer to drawing a line under years of taxpayer-funded bailouts that have prompted public outrage. After seven hours of late-night talks, finance ministers from the bloc's 27 countries emerged with a blueprint to close or salvage banks in trouble. The plan stipulates that shareholders, bondholders and depositors with more than 100,000 euros ($132,000)